Memes in The Guardian

Linking to this weekend's piece in case anyone has not yet seen. I'm happy that these ideas are now reaching a larger audience. I thought it would be worthwhile to offer a few more notes here for supporters. Please join us in the Discord to discuss!

Why Now?

Everyone seems to know what is happening online but no one seems able to say it. 

I think this is partly because the “funnel” analogy comes with two major associations; (1) advertising; the ratio of views to monetization; and (2) counter-terrorism; similar methodologies are used to map extremist networks and to prevent real world violence. At a time of historic unrest, few can risk making statements that allow their political opponents to draw bad faith comparisons.

My role as an artist legitimizes me to weigh in on emergent cultural trends but also uniquely allows for my input to be dismissed as creative ramblings. Sometimes artists and comedians can say things that journalists and politicians can’t.

Stages

From my observations, the online politicization process takes 2-4 years. It involves extensive socializing online and eventually results in a political commitment made in the outside world. These commitments may take many forms and they can be observed across all corners of the political spectrum. This process has many, many stages. Here are some broad generalizations;

• Networks of tacit support; people who will advocate, voice dissent, post, protest and vote.

• Paper membership; if real world organizations exist, ones that are publicly visible and have intent to build political power, people will join them.

• Extremism; if all else fails, young radicals will lapse into depressive nihilism and sometimes into real world violence.

More than Algorithms

The ad-revenue model places clear incentives for platforms to algorithmically recommend increasingly specified (or in this case politically extreme) material. More viewer engagement means more ads between, during and alongside the content. In general, recommendation algorithms do show you “more of what you want” but this still fails to answer why we want more. Here are a few key points to consider;

• Closing cognitive gaps; new inputs from social media challenge our beliefs. Our reactions help to sort us into the appropriate echo chambers.

• Youth search for identity; part of today’s online polarization is magnified by young people trying out new and transgressive political identities.

• The real crisis; any serious political analysis must also conclude that there are a variety of very real, presently unfolding crises which are driving people toward the polarized edges of the political spectrum. The established way of doing things is clearly failing.

Trend Lines

In a recent interview with a young social media user, I asked when she first got into politics. She told me it was around age 13 when she “started looking into online stuff”. In some ways, being on social media is synonymous with becoming politicized for the younger generation. In today’s very unpredictable world there are a few things which seem fairly certain;

• Proletarianization; American wages and productivity will continue to diverge. Many young people may not be able to accumulate wealth or property.

• Multi-layered collapse; material crises (those that occur outside of the media news cycle) will become increasingly frequent and begin to overlap, ex. pandemic + riots + wild fires + more

• All social media influencers will soon become political influencers; competition forces them to tap into trending content. Those who remain neutral will sink to the bottom of the feed.

The New American Right

Critics will attempt to argue that social media platforms are implicitly right-wing and as a result of this inherent bias, they helped to produced a right-wing movement. But this fails to accurately describe both the platforms and the movement. 

The new American right is markedly different from the conservatism of recent decades. It is not an intended byproduct of the neoliberal atomization that characterizes today’s social media. (Sadly this description seems to more closely fit parts of today’s left.)

At our current stage in capitalism’s historical development, certain market failures (housing, education, healthcare, etc) are extraordinarily transparent. As a result, this new generation of American conservatives, one which will only fully emerge in the next few years, has tracked significantly “left” on economic issues. They have a critique of big tech and the very social networks that allowed them to form. In most cases, their politicization involved doubling back on what were previously considered sacred and incontrovertible assumptions, most notably; the benevolence of the free market and the exceptionalism of the United States. All of this should be taken as evidence that it is indeed possible to build counter-hegemonic movements within the existing structures of social media.

TLDR— today’s social media platforms are culturally “left” and economically “right” but the emerging generation of American nationalists are culturally “right” and economically “left”.

Conclusion

Whether we are fans of internet subcultures or not, it seems like online outreach may be the only practical way forward for the left. Political education needs to be done at a massive scale and it has to be funded through small donors. It is safe to say that the media arm of the class war will not secure capital investment.

In the last few years, many recommendation algorithms and TOS have been redesigned. Many radical channels have been deplatformed. But these interim solutions do not confront the issue at its roots. Macro trends will continue to force political polarization. Politicization funnels will only become increasingly influential as we move forward.

As we have learned with many recent trends online, what is first entertained as silly and dismissable can stick in our heads and have lasting effects. I hope that these ideas are given serious consideration.